Have you ever watched the professional dancers doing the Cha Cha? What a beautiful, energetic, Cuban dance filled with lots of fancy footwork, sharp, quick and sultry moves. I’ve always wanted to learn to dance that way and I can only imagine the dedication it would take to achieve that level. For now, I’ll leave my appreciation to the beautiful professionals that have mastered the dance.
The Cha Cha, I noticed, has a lot of movement but not a whole lot of distance. Moving up and back and side to side, spinning and continually in motion but always going back to where you started. Do you ever feel like that is your life? I know at one point I felt like that was mine. I was trying to figure everything out all by myself and I was just frustrating myself. How could I know what I didn’t know?
I hear so many women talk about not getting results in their life.
“How come I know what to do but I don’t do it?” they say. “I have goals in my business, but then I don’t work on them and it makes me so mad!” they’ll tell me. “I’m tired of taking a few steps forward only to stop and retreat or take a couple steps back.” They’ll claim. “I’m so uncertain of what to do!” I hear.
Why does this happen? Usually it’s one of the reasons below.
- Lack of Motivation
- Lack of Confidence
- Lack of Knowledge
- Lack of Accountability
- Lack of Time
The BIG question is – what can I do about it? Here are the 5 tips to keep you confidently moving towards what you want:
- Ask Why? If you’re just not motivated to do it you need to ask yourself why? You want to dig a little deeper. Why are you even doing what you are doing? What is your Why or your reason for having the business or wanting to accomplish a task in the first place? Are you doing it for you or is it for someone else? The Why is usually the real issue and that’s the one you need to address but most often we don’t ask or explore. Once you know what’s underneath it you can brainstorm and tackle it.
- Examine the Discomfort. If you lack the confidence because you’re afraid to do it or it’s out of your comfort zone (and most worthwhile things are) you want to examine the fear. Is it the creepy sort of fear (dangerous) or is it the “I really don’t want to do this but if I do, I’ll feel fantastic” sort of fear? If you discover it’s the latter and not the former then do this: Just do it (thank you Nike) and treat it like an experiment. You’re just doing this to see what happens. You are taking whatever information comes as a result of it to learn something from it. That’s the goal of any endeavor anyway – you learn from it!
- Who knows? If you don’t know how to do it, find someone who does. Is there someone in your group of colleagues, a friend or business acquaintance? With Google and YouTube available, you can find out how to do just about anything! Read a book, take an online course, or go to a workshop – whatever you need to do to get the information.
- Find a buddy or a group. If you aren’t accountable to anyone and that’s affecting your productivity and goals then join a group or start a group of like-minded individuals and gather for the reason of supporting each other to be accountable. Set goals, discuss what’s working and brainstorm what’s not. Make sure the group has structure to it so that everyone gets equal time and your meeting doesn’t get too lengthy. You can do this virtually on a call, in a social media group or in person. Put the call out and you’ll be surprised who answers!
- Prioritize. If you feel you lack the time to get this important task done then maybe it’s not really a priority. If it is a priority and something key to taking your business or career, health, relationship, etc. to the next level then you have to figure out where it falls in the scope of other tasks. I use the Franklin Covey A, B, C method of prioritization:
- A – These are the tasks you want to get done today are the highest priority
- B – These would be nice to finish, but you’ll get by if they aren’t completed at this time.
- C – These are the lowest priority and probably aren’t urgent but nice to complete at some point.
- I then number them 1, 2, 3, etc. within each letter. I know exactly what I need to be working on and exactly what to work on next to move me in the direction I want.
Once you identify what is holding you back and why you can use one of these tips so you know how you’ll move forward towards what you want!
Midlife Mindset Expert, Debbie Peterson, helps women build Confidence and get Clarity on their Identity and Purpose. Now Debbie is supporting women to “Get Results NOW”, a program to give you guidance, encouragement and accountability so you can starting living YOUR Next Chapter in life the way you want! You deserve no less. Go to http://gettingtoclarity.com/getresultsnow
